622
PARTISAN REVIEW
What is surprising, and in its way quite extraordinary, is how
little of this is reflected in the pages of the
Partisan Review
sym–
posium. Lionel Trilling does make reference to "the commanding
position of Stalinism in French cultural life." And Philip Rahv sug–
gests the end of ideology, which he calls the end of utopian illusions.
But much of the debate centered upon the themes of mass culture,
the alienation of the intellectuals, and the justification of noncon–
formity, issues that were posed most sharply and aggressively by
three of the dissenting voices in the symposium. C. Wright Mills, in
the habitually truculent posture of the outrider, wrote: "Imagine 'the
old
PR'
running the title 'Our Country.' ... You would have cringed."
Norman Mailer found the symposium "shocking" and "wonder[ed] if
there has been a time in the last fifty years when the American artist
has felt more alienated." For Irving Howe, "America has entered the
stage of kitsch, the mass culture of the middlebrows." Capitalism as
a world-system is exhausted, American vitality is maintained by a
war economy. Yet "the power of Stalinism does not permit one to
settle on an isle of rectitude equidistant from both sides.... Veer–
ing and tacking as history compels him, the socialist intellectual
must try to defend democracy with some realism while maintaining
his independence from and opposition to the status quo."
Since the position of the dissenters did represent the earlier
Par–
tisan Review
attitudes, most of the contributors in one way or another
wrestled with those themes, the ghosts of that past, rather than the
existing actualities abroad.
Sidney Hook, with his characteristic lucidity, declared: "There
are all kinds of alienation in the world and one can get startling ef–
fects by confusing them." And he proceeded in his shrewd manner to
disentangle three meanings. On the matter of non-conformity, Hook
remarked: "I see no specific virtue in the attitude of conformity or
non-conformity.... [They] are relational terms. Before evaluating
them I should like to know
to
and
with what
a person is conforming or
not conforming, and
how."
A sensible statement, but sociologically
the postures of submission (as in the instance of Lukacs) or of
rebellion (as that of Sartre) are rooted in the character of these indi–
viduals who, in their ability to exemplify these attitudes, embody an
historical
sensibilite
of segments of the intelligentsia. That is the
source of their appeal.
Ever the "realist," James Burnham chided those who believed
that America had become the land where the citrons of culture
bloomed: "This is the generation ... of the triumph of the Book
Clubs, columnists and radio, the relative decrease in the number of
